mySociety is an e-democracy project of the UK-based registered charity named UK Citizens Online Democracy, that aims to build "socially focused tools with offline impacts". It was founded by Tom Steinberg in September 2003,[1] and started activity after receiving a £250,000 grant in September 2004. Steinberg says that mySociety was inspired by a collaboration with his then-flatmate James Crabtree which spawned Crabtree's article "Civic hacking: a new agenda for e-democracy".[2][3]

In March 2015, Steinberg announced his decision to stand down as the head of mySociety while, in his words, "we've got a good map, a solid car, and we've got enough money for fuel".[4]

TheyWorkForYou was originally built almost entirely by volunteers using the parsing software of Public Whip, and launched at NTK's NotCon '04 conference.[9] At the time, Cory Doctorow called it "the most amazing, subversive piece of political webware I've ever seen".[10]

As time passed, more features were added and more areas of Parliament were covered, such as the House of Lords back to 1999.[11] Around the 2005 general election, Channel 4 used a branded version of TheyWorkForYou to supply their MP data.[12] The site won the Community and Innovation award in the 2005 New Statesman New Media Awards, with the judges saying that they "were unanimous in feeling that TheyWorkForYou was the nomination that has done most to contribute to civic society in the UK.".[13] In the House of Lords, in a debate on the Power Inquiry, Lord Gould of Brookwood referred to TheyWorkForYou and the other mySociety sites as "probably the biggest single catalyst for political change in this country".[14]

TheyWorkForYou has become so established in the workings of Parliament itself that one MP has used the fact that her husband subscribes to email alerts on her speeches to remind him of their 30th wedding anniversary.[18]

When the site launched, it did not have the right to reproduce Hansard, and no licence for it existed. A licence was later given, and click-use licences for Parliamentary copyright information were created as a result.[19]

In early 2006, The Times published an article stating that MPs were "making forgettable contributions to debate" or tabling numerous written questions simply to boost their statistics on TheyWorkForYou.[20] This led to a debate in the House of Commons on the increase in questions, led by Peter Luff.[21] The site removed the absolute rankings and added some more explanatory text in response,[22] and held a meeting at Parliament later in the year to discuss better metrics.[23] In summer 2006, Jack Straw, Leader of the House of Commons also mentioned TheyWorkForYou as a site which "seems to measure Members' work in quantitative rather than qualitative terms."[24]

In a Business debate on 26 April 2007, Theresa May stated that TheyWorkForYou had been "threatened with legal action for repeating what was printed in Hansard" but Jack Straw confirmed that "publication... of a fair and accurate account of a debate in either House is protected".[25]

Alaveteli is described as "a project to create a free, standard, internationalised platform for making Freedom of Information (FOI) requests".[28][29] Alaveteli is funded by the Open Society Institute and the Hivos Foundation.

It started life as the software running WhatDoTheyKnow, a UK site that publishes responses to FOI requests. The original WhatDoTheyKnow code was written primarily by Francis Irving while working for mySociety.[30] Alaveteli is named after Alaveteli in Finland where Anders Chydenius who was an early campaigner[31] for Freedom of Information worked as a curate. Alaveteli was intended to be a name for the software rather than a public facing website or brand.

Alaveteli is has been translated into many languages, around 25 languages have more than 50% translation coverage.[32][33]

FixMyStreet is a mySociety website through which users can report potholes, broken street lights and similar problems with streets and roads in the United Kingdom to their local council or related organisation, and see what reports have already been made.[36][37][38][39]

The site was initially funded by the Department for Constitutional Affairs Innovations Fund and built by mySociety, in conjunction with the Young Foundation; the code for the site was written by Francis Irving, Matthew Somerville, and Chris Lightfoot. The site was originally launched as "Neighbourhood Fix-It", but it was decided to change to a shorter and easier name in June 2007 when one became available.[35] A FixMyStreet app was developed in 2008 to enable iPhone users to report problems using their phones,[40] and since then volunteers have written apps for Nokia and Android, as well as another app for the iPhone.[35]

FixMyStreet won an award at SustainIT eWell-Being Awards in 2008,[41] and has been listed in various newspaper best or top websites.[42][43] The site was an inspiration for the government's "Show Us A Better Way" contest.[44]

A version of the site for reporting abandoned empty homes, in conjunction with the Empty Homes Agency, Shelter Cymru and the Scottish Empty Homes Partnership, was launched in late 2008, and was called "a model of easy use" by the Guardian.[45] This site was repurposed for the Channel 4 TV series The Great British Property Scandal in December 2011, which was nominated for a BAFTA and an Emmy.[46]

In 2010, FixMyStreet was closely integrated with The Guardian newspaper's Guardian Local project. Emily Bell wrote in her launch message: "A hugely important part of this project has been the involvement of MySociety, who we've collaborated with to provide customised versions of their civic tools, allowing and encouraging local residents to report issues, contact their representatives and generally become engaged in the governance and care of their locality.",[47] and Alistair Tibbitt, Development Manager for Greener Leith wrote "the Guardian certainly deserve plaudits for integrating the local FixMyStreet service so tightly into their new Edinburgh Beat Blog."[48]

FixMyStreet has inspired similar sites in other countries. The NUUG funded the development of a Norwegian version of FixMyStreet, FiksGataMi,[49] which also led to the FixMyStreet open source code becoming more generic, easier to install, and able to handle different maps, including OpenStreetMap.[50]

PledgeBank is a website which runs pledges on all topics, of the form: "I will do x if y number of people agree to do the same." Such public commitments are a non-coercive way to solve problems of collective action, especially when the goal is a public good. PledgeBank was founded by mySociety and went live June 13, 2005. Though hosted/run by a UK-based nonprofit, PledgeBank has been translated by volunteers into 12 languages in addition to English. The Omidyar Network has funded outreach efforts for PledgeBank in the U.S.[51]

Notable organisations promoted or started by pledges on PledgeBank include the seed funding for the UK Open Rights Group and publicity and legal funding for the NO2ID campaign.

Furthermore, it has been utilized to drum up global support for online protests, most recently by Freeculture.org to boycott CDs with DRM.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair started a pledge himself, to become patron of a community sports club if 100 notable figures will do the same, which succeeded.[52]

Examples of successful pledges include the current NOMEDIA campaign started by Graham Woods. He pledged to completely boycott all forms of media for two weeks as long as 10 other people do the same, and the textbook for Africa project started by Darren Grover. Another overwhelmingly successful pledge was run by "Big Ed" to stop unnecessarily using plastic grocery bags.

WhatDoTheyKnow[53][54] — a site designed to help people find out (through Freedom of Information requests) what the British government and public services are doing. The site receives over 30,000 unique visitors a week.[55]

Around 15% to 20% of requests to UK Central Government are made through WhatDoTheyKnow.com.[63][64] Over 15,000 public bodies have been added to the site, mainly by volunteers.[65] More than 120,000 requests have been made using the site.[66]

The site has been described by the Guardian as "an idiot's guide to making a freedom of information request." [67] The Information Commissioner's Office has stated that it believes "the most up-to-date informal list of all public authorities is held on the website".[68] Information released through the site has given rise to serious and less serious news stories.[69][70][71] The site is used by a number of MPs.[72]

The site's parent project Alaveteli is "a project to create a free, standard, internationalised platform for making Freedom of Information (FOI) requests".[73][74][75]

The site was originally available only in English but a partially translated Welsh version has recently been released.[76]

WhatDoTheyKnow started life as the winning idea for mySociety competition in 2006 for ideas for public interest websites to build.[78] Both Phil Rodgers and Francis Irving entered idea.[79] Francis Irving later became the main developer of the site [80] which was launched in 2008.[81]

In April 2012, Brighton and Hove Councillor Jason Kitkat announced: “We [the Council] are working with MySociety to adapt their WhatDoTheyKnow system to support a better workflow for freedom of information requests and proactive publishing of everything we release." [86]

WriteToThem provides contact details for elected representatives at all levels of UK government, and users can send messages to them directly from the site (formerly FaxYourMP)[87][88] In 2006, it was reported by the Guardian that the Conservative MP Ian Liddell-Grainger appeared to admit in an email to the site to attempting to "up" his rating by sending himself queries.[88]

In response to the EU Directive on Reuse of Public Sector Information 2005,[98] the UK government created an Office of Public Sector Information[99] to promote public sector information reuse. OPSI now runs a government data unlocking service[100] to help people find and reuse government data with licensing or format restrictions.

In March 2006 The Guardian started a "Free our Data" campaign,[101] which got Inspire[102] a proposal for free open geodata, passed into EU law.

In April 2007, Cabinet Office Minister Hilary Armstrong commissioned Ed Mayo and mySociety director Tom Steinberg to draft a "Power of Information Review" on how the government could serve the public's information needs better.[103] The resulting report[104] led Cabinet Minister Tom Watson, MP to create a Power of Information Task Force.[105][106] They launched the ShowUsABetterWay competition[107] to award £20,000 to the best application reusing public government data.